I have identified a new medical condition. It is a subset of the dreaded Seniors’ Moment and I have called it Name Ablation. Name Ablation is the random removal of cherished names from your memory on either a temporary or permanent basis. Whether modern medical science can find a cure while I still have sufficient neurons left to benefit is problematical. Maybe not I suspect.

This will illustrate how Name Ablation affects a typical sufferer. Me.

Last month four important names skidded of my main memory track and into oblivion. They will come back from time to time but probably not permanently.

Bruce Springsteen started the rot.

I was telling a friend about Roy Orbison’s famous Black and White concert; “you know, the one where Roy, K D Lang, Bonnie Tyler, Elvis Costello and and…” but Bruce wasn’t there any more. Gone. Kaput. Right off the radar.

Actually, Bruce has done this to me before but I usually manage to haul him back. Not this time though.  All I could manage was a feeble, “you know, The Boss… what is his name?” An excruciating hunt for Bruce ensued. Every crevice of my cerebral conglomerate was thoroughly scoured. Each corner was stealthily approached. Sometimes I pretended it wasn’t really Bruce I was looking for at all in the hope he would sort of jump out and give himself up.  No such luck. Of course I realised that all I had to do was look on the DVD cover and I would have him instantly but to do that would have him simply evaporate again as soon as I took my mind off him.

Bruce teasingly reappeared again. Oddly enough it was while I was struggling to locate another Name Ablation victim. Talleyrand.  Yes it was Napoleon’s brilliant Foreign Minister who had dropped off the perch too. It was more than I could bear. In my desperate efforts to resuscitate Talleyrand, Bruce Springsteen suddenly gave himself up. No apology, no explanation. Nothing. There he was rolling around happily on my tongue waiting to be used. What a tart.  It did occur to me that Bruce may just have been a bit jealous of Talleyrand or at least of my interest in him.  

It was a real tussle to recover old Talleyrand. I didn’t get him back for almost a week. He jumped back on board the moment I recovered John Malkovich who played Talleyrand in the film about Napoleon. Malkovich had gone absent without leave almost a month earlier and I had despaired of ever recovering him. I have absolutely no idea why Jayne Mansfield quit on me but she did. I got her back incidentally while trying to retrieve Frank Ifield.  Since I remembered Jayne best for her busty youth I felt that this wasn’t such a bad trade. Good old Frank! Did he ever put up a fight. I stalked him for almost three days before he yoddled his way back into my memory banks.  Funnily enough I had just recalled the name of his biggest hit, I Remember You, when he shot through. There one second, gone the next. Maybe he didn’t like the song.

That is Name Ablation. A friend of mine by way calls it Name Subtraction but I definitely discovered it before him.  I know that this condition is not well described in the medical literature and I doubt if any serious research is being carried out but there should be and urgently.  There are likely to be thousands of sufferers in Australia alone and who knows how many of those have already lost Bruce Springsteen?